Extra Basket

GODS — 40 | RAPTORS — 15. The second quarter began before the crowd could exhale. The scoreboard flashed like an omen above the court while the lights washed everything in a clinical glare that left no shadow safe. Commentators' microphones squeaked, then tried to stitch words together, but even their practiced cadence fractured like the rest of the arena. You could hear it in the broadcast feed a tremor under the announcer's voice that the camera could not hide.

"This, this is not just a game anymore," one voice said, too quickly, too thin. "I—uh, folks, I don't know how to explain what we're seeing."

Another voice, deeper, tried to anchor the signal. "They're elite athletes, sure, but this — something about the way they move, the way the Raptors are… pausing. It's like they're being edited out of the playbook in real time."

Fans in the stands had become a tissue of reactions some hands on faces, others frozen with phones half-raised, trying to capture a thing that felt like blasphemy against normalcy. A band of supporters chanted out of rote habit, a metallic drone of sound. Even the chants sounded hesitant, as if the crowd wanted to participate but wasn't certain the event still belonged to them.

Zeus walked onto the floor first. He did not sprint. He did not warm up. He took the court like someone reclaiming a room he already owned. The cameras tried to find adjectives—"commanding," "regal," "intimidating" but the words felt small and round in the announcers' mouths. The feed cut to the jumbotron: AURA OUTPUT. No flashy graphic, no glowing meter; the statistic sat plain and clinical. It read like a diagnosis.

On the baseline, the Gods gathered by instinct. Hades' shadow seemed to deepen the paint where he stood. Poseidon adjusted his grip on the ball with slow, oceanic movements. Chronos stretched like someone testing the seams of time itself. Ares cracked his knuckles once and looked down the court like a man smelling battle from a distance. They moved as if they had choreographed the world and found it obliging today.

At the Raptors' huddle, Coach Jenkins' voice had been a brittle hope during the timeout, but now the team walked back onto the floor with that hope still fragile in their chests. They were playing in a pressure that belonged on a different plane one that tested convictions rather than endurance. Jalen's jaw was a stone, Tyrese's shoulders tight as bowstrings, Malik's eyes haunted with an edge of vertigo, Zion's fingers twitching with solutions that refused to take root, Kobe's stance slightly off like someone rediscovering gravity. They had been told to play, and yet the order felt more like a dare.

In the bleachers, Vorpal's contingent had formed a thin, bright line of attention. Ethan's hands hovered over the railing, not gripping so much as feeling the cold of metal like it might keep his heart steady. Lucas sat a breath behind him, face a mask of concentration, mouth set. Evan watched with that coach's nervousness in his jaw, while Louie cheered to be loud but swallowed words and watched more than shouted. Brandon had his arms folded, a silent platform of strength. Ryan's eyes moved over each God's stance, measuring. Josh and Aiden leaned forward face-etched two young men trying to memorize a textbook of otherworldly moves. Coonie prayed with fingers threaded, Jeremy calculated, Kai Mendoza mouthed encouragement. Ayumi clutched the team clipboard like it was a talisman. Coach Fred Mason there to learn, to take notes, to be something better than he had been stood with the others like a man watching a storm from a fragile shelter.

They were not players in this quarter, but they were not immune. The aura that undulated from the center court was a physical press a pressure that made muscles feel heavy and thoughts slow. Ethan could feel it in his molars, a slight vibration like the memory of thunder. Lucas' breath came steadier than most; he had something like a grin left in reserve. "This is the right kind of test," his mind thought, bold and sharp as a knife. "If we watch, we learn."

The commentators kept trying. One of them, an older man with a rasp in his throat, whispered into his mic like the words themselves might break: "When Zeus—Adrian Holt—decides, it's not about strength. It's about consent. The court conforms. The players aren't being outplayed so much as they're being overwritten."

They cut to a fan in the second row an elderly man with hands trembling around a foam finger. He looked like someone who had been alive to see legends, and yet his mouth opened at the sight of a game he recognized slowly creep into myth. Camera cuts found children in jerseys with wide, honest eyes; many of them had stopped mimicking the cheers they should have learned. They watched with a kind of sacred fear.

The Raptors took their positions. The ball was inbounded. Zion set the offense, scanning lines that were supposed to be filled with options, but each path blinked with a soft blue nothing as if someone had drawn a finger across an old map and caused certain roads to vanish. He told the team what to do, he wired the plays like clockwork yet every play spent a little energy before it started. "They move like a tide," Evan murmured beside Ethan, as much to himself as to the group. "We can see the push."

Play resumed with strained normalcy. The Raptors ran a set, trying to dictate tempo, to force the Gods to react. For a heartbeat it looked possible, Tyrese got free on the wing, his feet sharp, eyes hunting the rim. The ball came to him crisp and warm. He rose, muscles snapping to memory, and in the stands a thousand breaths held for him. Tyrese's shot was pure in form, wrist whispering the familiar, practiced arc.

Poseidon looked at the rim and did not move. He did not stab out a hand nor leap in contest. He only kept eyes on Tyrese like a tide that agrees to be present and denies the shore any dominion. The moment the ball left Tyrese's fingertips, a pressure descended, a sucking that tightened the chest and bent arcs sideways. The ball kissed iron and sighed out. Tyrese crumpled inward a degree, a small physical collapse that felt huge in a world where margins mattered like lives.

"He's reading more than the shot," Coach Fred breathed, half to himself. Each Vorpal member felt the instruction as if semantically rooted, they were scholars of movement, and their lesson tonight was to understand not only the motion but the message it carried. "He's watching timing."

To be continue