Extra Basket

SCORE: GODS — 92 | RAPTORS — 55

The buzzer's echo still lingered, as if time itself refused to move forward.

Then silence.

The kind that pressed on the chest.

The kind that made hearts ache more than defeat ever could.

The Gods stood at center court, halos dimming. The glow that once painted the air gold began to fade, revealing sweat, exhaustion… and something else.

Emotion.

For the first time, Monsters looked human.

Zeus exhaled quietly, eyes tracing the faint trails of smoke that rose from the court.

Ares leaned on his knees, knuckles bruised from colliding with men who refused to break.

Poseidon's calm had fractured; Hades' smirk was gone replaced by thought.

For a while, none of them spoke.

The crowd didn't cheer. They just… watched.

Until Zeus finally said it.

"They made me feel…"

He paused, as if searching for a word that didn't exist in their dictionary

"…alive."

Ares chuckled bitterly.

"They bled just to score fifty-five."

He looked up at the scoreboard, then clenched his fist.

"And yet it feels like we lost something."

Poseidon wiped his face with a towel, murmuring,

"Perhaps victory dulls the senses… but struggle—sharpens the soul."

Hades tilted his head, that sly grin returning, though softer now.

"Mortals. Always dying for meaning."

Zeus smiled faintly.

"And yet… they find it."

He turned toward the Raptors' bench, where players lay sprawled—muscles twitching, lungs fighting for air, tears mingling with sweat.

Every one of them had given everything, even when the scoreboard mocked them.

Zeus's voice dropped low, almost reverent.

"Tell me, Ares… when was the last time you saw mortals fight like that?"

Ares didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on Jalen, the boy who had faced gods and refused to kneel.

The divine court shimmered faintly before dissolving into light.

The Gods left in silence, not in arrogance, but in respect.

For the first time, they bowed not visibly, but inwardly.

….

The Raptors' Locker Room

The air was heavy with exhaustion and disbelief.

Shoes lay scattered. Towels clung to the floor.

The sound of dripping water from the shower room punctuated the silence.

Jalen sat on the bench, head lowered, jersey soaked through.

His hands shook not from fatigue, but from the emotion he'd tried to swallow the entire game.

Around him, his teammates slumped in silence.

Zion sat with his hands pressed to his face.

Tyrese leaned back against the lockers, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Kobe Morales wiped his eyes, muttering,

"We didn't lose… right?"

Coach Jenkins stood before them, his voice barely holding steady.

"No, you didn't."

He crouched down, looking each player in the eye.

"That wasn't a defeat. That was proof. Proof that humans can reach gods—and make them look back."

His voice cracked, but the pride in it burned brighter than any win could.

"You made the crowd feel again. You reminded the world that basketball isn't about power, it's about heart. And that's something even the divine can't create."

Tyrese's lips trembled.

"Then why does it hurt so much?"

Coach smiled faintly, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Because it mattered."

The room fell silent again.

Then a single clap echoed from the hall.

Outside the Locker Room

The hallway outside the Raptors' locker room was no longer a hallway.

It was a sanctuary of silence.

The walls still trembled faintly from the echoes of the buzzer that ended everything.

But now, that sound felt a lifetime away like thunder fading after a storm that had already passed.

What remained was the aftermath:

broken cheers, wet eyes, hearts trying to make sense of what they'd witnessed.

Fans pressed against the corridor barriers, still weeping.

Some wore Raptors jerseys names smeared with sweat and tears.

Others didn't even wear team colors; they had just come to see greatness.

Now, they found themselves part of something else something heavier, purer.

A woman with trembling hands clutched her scarf to her mouth, sobbing quietly as if mourning a friend.

Beside her, a man who had spent the game shouting insults at the Raptors now stood perfectly still his eyes red, his voice gone.

In his silence, there was something close to reverence.

The air itself was thick heavy with the warmth of breath and the faint scent of sweat, Gatorade, and disbelief.

No one moved toward the exits.

No one scrolled on their phones.

Everyone just stood.

A little boy in a crumpled Raptors jersey tugged his father's sleeve.

His eyes were glassy, his cheeks streaked with tears.

"Dad," he whispered, voice small and fragile.

"They didn't win… but why does it feel like they did?"

The father knelt down beside him.

He smiled through a face lined with emotion, voice low and trembling like he was afraid of breaking the silence that had become sacred.

"Because, son…" he said softly.

"Sometimes courage scores more than points."

The boy blinked, confusion mixing with awe.

He didn't fully understand yet but someday he would.

Someday, he'd remember this night not as a loss, but as the moment he first saw what it meant to fight with nothing left to give.

Down the hall, a cluster of reporters stood frozen with cameras at their sides.

Their lenses hung uselessly from straps; their hands trembled, not from adrenaline, but from something close to guilt.

They couldn't bring themselves to shout questions not after watching mortals bleed in front of gods.

The usual chaos flashes, microphones, the storm of media never came.

Even the arena's usual hum of chatter, footsteps, vending carts, all of it seemed to disappear into the stillness.

It was as if the world itself had agreed to go quiet for a moment, to honor what they had just seen.

Security guards, usually brisk and unflinching, now stood with heads bowed.

One of them, a veteran of countless games wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist when he thought no one was looking.

He whispered to himself, barely audible:

"Those kids… they didn't play basketball tonight. They went to war."

Farther down the hall, an old man in a faded Zeus Academy jacket stared at the floor.

He had cheered for the Gods all season reveled in their dominance, their perfection.

But now his hands shook, his throat burned with something that felt like shame and admiration tangled together.

"They were never supposed to make me cry," he muttered to no one.

"But damn it… they did."

The crowd that had once roared like thunder now breathed as one unified not by fandom, but by awe.

Every person in that hallway, young, old, rich, poor, gods' fans or not shared the same quiet reverence.

They had seen something beyond sport.

Beyond logic.

Beyond what scoreboards could measure.

They had seen humanity pure, unfiltered, bleeding and beautiful.

No camera could capture it.

No statistic could define it.

It wasn't about plays, or points, or records.

It was about will, the kind that stands before divine power and refuses to kneel.

Somewhere, from inside the locker room, a faint sound echoed, a player's sob, a voice breaking in exhaustion.

No one outside dared move.

Even the sound of it felt sacred.

The kind of sound that reminds you what effort truly costs.

The fluorescent lights above flickered once, painting faces in soft gold.

For a moment, it looked like the crowd was bathed in the last remnants of divine light, the same glow that had crowned the court minutes ago.

Except now, it didn't belong to the Gods.

It belonged to them.

To the fans, the dreamers, the believers, the ones who witnessed mortals reach the unreachable and still keep reaching.

Because deep down, they knew:

They hadn't watched a defeat tonight.

They had witnessed a rebirth.

A moment that would echo beyond the game, beyond the season maybe even beyond the realm of mortals.

And in that silence, one truth remained soft, enduring, eternal:

Sometimes courage doesn't win you trophies.

Sometimes it just reminds the world that even super talented like the Gods can bleed when mortals refuse to break.

To be continue